New website!

Technology Mar 28, 2023

If you're reading this, it must be working!

But why?

I've wanted a new website for a long time actually - the old website was hosted on Google Sites, which really didn't serve the purpose for what I wanted. I also really love free and open source software (FOSS) that can be self-hosted, such as this new platform called Ghost. That's right - this website is hosted on one of my personal cloud servers and maintained in-house. I really enjoy projects like this because it allows me to learn as well as eliminating external dependencies - in this case Google Sites and Google Images. If you're not familiar, Google Sites uses Google Images to host the graphics on the site.

What are the benefits?

This is a more technical question - but there are many. The new platform is much more mobile-friendly, optimized, has lots more features like tags and search, the interface is more elegant, it's open source, more customizable options, etc. The list goes on. Adding to this - I've painstakingly converted every image on this site to .webp format, which is much more optimized for web browsers, and that means they load faster.

Why does this matter to you?

That's simple. All of the points mentioned above result in faster load times on every page, easier readability for content, it's much easier to find older posts using the search function (it's really good btw!), and if you're reading this on a mobile device - just imagine a terrible site that's hard to use on your phone and has no style. That was the old site.

💡

And there's lots new things too, like this callout! Perfect for emphasizing how awesome something is.